Warren Buffet’s firm Berkshire Hathaway bought US$1 billion in Activision Blizzard shares just weeks before the company announced it was being bought by Microsoft for US$68.7 billion.
These shares have surged 24 per cent since, meaning Buffet has already made hundreds of millions on the punt.
Given Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates served on the board of Berkshire for years — only stepping down in March 2020 — and Buffet was a trustee at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation until June 2021, the fortuitous timing of this billion-dollar deal might seem suspicious to some.
Add to this that Buffet doesn’t usually make tech bets, and eyebrows are well and truly raised. Buffet himself has previously said he doesn’t invest in Microsoft because any such investment “would be the target of suggestions, or accusations even, that [Gates] had told me something or vice versa.”
This might have been a tidy loophole for Buffet get in on Microsoft stock indirectly – or maybe it’s just a co-incidence.
